Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr.13
By Fatih Karimov - Trend:
Iran will start swapping Turkmenistan's oil products by the next four months.
Hassan Khosrojerdi added that a number of storage facilities are being built by the private sector at a port in northern Golestan province, Iran's Fars news agency reported on April 13.
Khosrojerdi, the director of the association of Iranian oil product exporters, assed that the facilities will be used both for swapping and transiting oil products.
Iran plans to restart crude oil swap operations, which were halted in June 2009 by the administration of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
"We are planning to resume crude oil swap operations, and invite competent companies to cooperate... in this area," Iranian Deputy Oil Minister for International and Trade Affairs Ali Majedi told the Fars News Agency in March.
Iran started swapping oil and oil products in the late 1990s.
The decision to halt the swap activities compelled the Caspian Sea littoral states to choose other routes to deliver their oil products to international markets and also increased the smuggling of oil and oil products, Press TV reported.